Hi Sarah,
Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!
We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.
We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.
Important note!
Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.
If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.
Okay, let’s get started!
The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.
We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.
Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.
The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.
Regarding passion you picked Stage 4: I have an interest I’m actively pursuing, voluntarily devoting more than 3 hours of “free time” each week .
Regarding perseverance you picked .
As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.
Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.
In week 2, we looked at your interests.
Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.
Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.
Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.
In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.
You said your top three values were NA, NA, and NA.
You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.
When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was .
You said your top three talents were social, verbal, and musical.
We then talked about goal hierarchies.
You said you had a pretty good idea about your top-level goal.
We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.
A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to get an internship .
Here is how self-concordant that goal was:
Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.
It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!
Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.
We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:
Work Smart
In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.
You WOOPed!
For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said Get 7 hours of sleep every night. .
For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said Feeling rested and performing better on exams. .
For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said I may procrastinate .
For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: When I finish eating dinner, then I will begin working on my homework/studying. .
Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.
And here’s how much you learned
These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.
The important thing is that you learn something along the way!
In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.
You shared you’ve done daily practice in Violin .
We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.
In week 8, we discussed feedback.
Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!
You said you felt Embarrassed when receiving critical feedback, and Embarrassed when receiving positive feedback.
We then turned to learning about stress.
In week 9, you reported feeling a lot of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being recruiting .
We also talked about adversity and failure.
Although related, adversity and failure are different:
Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.
However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…
Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.
And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.
We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.
Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.
You describe the habit you chose as Something else .
Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.
Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?
So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.
In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.
Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.
Here’s how you described them:
You also wrote a gratitude letter to .
In one word, you said it made you feel .
One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.
… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.
Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.
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Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?
Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.
| |
| Everyone runs their own race - don't compare your grit to others'. |
| Sampling is required for deep interest. |
| Start thinking about careers that fit my talents and interests. |
| An occupation can be a job, a career, and a calling. There is not a big difference in life satisfaction depending on how one "categorizes" their occupation. |
| Be as specific as possible when setting goals and making plans. |
| Experts aren't born, they're made. |
| Ask for advice rather than feedback. |
| You can either appraise stress as debilitating or enhancing |
| Don't rely on willpower - change your situation |
| Ideal mentors are authoritative. |
| Self transcendence involves a top level goal oriented to others |
In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.
Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:
| |
| Susanna Liu |
| Sarah is a very kind person and an amazing teammate. She never fails to make our conversations more meaningful and helps us really connect as a team. Her kindness can be seen through small gestures, like when she got me a donut after I hurt my ankle. Sarah is also an incredibly giving person. For our team act of kindness, she suggested that we volunteer at a food bank together, a testament to her generosity. We bonded a lot as a team that morning so I’m super thankful to Sarah for coming up with the idea.
I was blown away by Sarah’s Discovery Project! The paintings all looked amazing, especially considering she’s only been painting for a few months. I especially loved the one of the beach landscape – the waves looked so dynamic and it had a realistic sense of depth. I learned a lot about different approaches to art through Sarah’s presentation. As someone who is also an artist, I want to start approaching my own practice through the lens of beliefs/mindsets rather than skills, which is something I learned from Sarah. Sarah – I’m so glad I got to know you this semester and I couldn’t have asked for a better teammate! Grit Gals Forever :) |
| Caroline Li |
| Sarah, you're so kind and thoughtful to everyone you speak to. I look forward to our class discussions so much, and you are always there to make me feel comfortable and heard when we chat. Thanks for organizing the trip to the JRA! It was so fun and I learned so much by being there. I love hearing about your passion for psychology and what you get up to on your weekends. Thanks for always being down to do something as a group! Couldn't have made it through the class without you.
I thought your discovery project was amazing! I love how you were so deliberate, taking master classes and actually learning the elements of painting, like its meaning, artistic choices, sketching first and using color. Your paintings were amazing and definitely more beautiful than what I thought someone could do in only a semester! I think it's definitely a talent of yours and something that you should continue doing in the future.
It's been an awesome semester! |
| Rafaella Lambrinos |
| I always looked forward to my Tuesday afternoons with Sarah! She is so hardworking, and her unwavering drive is really admirable, serving as an inspiration to everyone around her. Sarah radiates positivity and kindness. She always got to class earlier than me, and would greet me with a smile and a piece of candy. This small gesture was really meaningful to me; it always brightened my mood. Sarah’s ability to make something as ordinary as reviewing the weekly readings before our quiz into an enjoyable task is a testament to her character. I am so grateful to have met her through Grit Lab, and value our friendship.
I loved Sarah’s presentation. I appreciated that she showed the different steps she took when painting. I thought this was a great visual representation of both her progress and learning. Her presentation was also very insightful- I never knew the importance of color blocking. Sarah’s point that art is a means to foster connection and meaning resonated with me. I could tell that her Discovery Project was really meaningful to her. |
We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.
Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?
Drumroll please…
Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.
In any case, grit is not built in a day…
…remember that progress is never smooth…
…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.
With grit and gratitude,
Angela and the Grit Lab team.